Essays: Literary Works with Commentaries

Image:   Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings

Essays: Literary Works with Commentaries

This room in my literary home holds links to poems, novels, and other literary works primarily written by others along with my personal commentaries on the works.

Thank you for visiting my literary home.  Questions, comments, and suggestions offered in good faith are always welcome.

Poems with Commentaries

1. Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Cop”
2. Barack Obama’s “Pop”
3. Barack Obama’s “Underground”
4. Malcolm M. Sedam’s “The Hill Maiden”
5. W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”
6. Al Gore’s “One thin September soon”
7. W. H. Auden’s “Doggerel by a Senior Citizen”
8. Gloria’s “To the Man I Married”  
9. Sharon Olds’ “The Victims”
10. Ben Okri’s Poem “Obama”
11. Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “The Queen’s Last Ride”
12. Audre Lorde’s “Father Son and Holy Ghost”
13. Seamus Heaney’s “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”
14. Walter de la Mare’s “Silver”
15. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Christmas Bells”
16. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life”  
17. D. H. Lawrence’s “Afternoon in School: The Last Lesson”
18. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Sympathy” 
19. Robert Bly’s “The Cat in the Kitchen” and “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” 
20. Thomas Thornburg’s “Serving the South”
21. Sara Teasdale’s “Barter”
22. Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” 
23. Renée Nicole Macklin’s “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”
24. Sara Teasdale’s “I Am Not Yours”
25. Cornelius Eady’s “Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered”  
26. Malcolm M. Sedam’s “Desafinado” 
27. Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
28. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
29. Amanda Gorman’s “For Renee Nicole Good”  
30. Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”
31. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Come not, When I Am Dead”
32. E. A. Robinson’s “Richard Cory”
33. Stephen Crane’s “The Wayfarer” and Other Versanelles
34. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Sensitive Plant”
35. Arna Bontemps’ “God Give to Men”
36. Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips”
37. Lucille Clifton’s “at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989”
38. A. E. Housman’s “Is my team ploughing” (XXVII)
39. W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen”
40. Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”
41. Vachel Lindsay’s “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight”
42. Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”
43. Rita Dove’s “Rosa”
44. Robert Graves’ “Not Dead”
45. William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by Joy”
46. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”
47. Adrienne Rich’s “Living in Sin”
48. Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck”
49. Charles Bernstein’s  “The Ballad of the Girly Man”
50. Barbara Guest’s “Red Lilies”
51. Charles Simic’s “My Shoes”

Elegies with Commentaries

• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d  Walt Whitman’s admiration for President Lincoln is dramatized in the poet’s elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” mourning the death while celebrating the presidency of the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln.
• O Captain!  My Captain!  Whitman’s even more noted elegy honoring President Lincoln.
• Vachel Lindsay’s “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight  One of Vachel Lindsay’s most noted poems focuses Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth American president. In this elegy, Lincoln strolls about “at Midnight” contemplating the tragedy of nations being in on the brink of a world war.  The Civil War president wonders therefore about his own legacy.
• Audre Lorde’s “Father Son and Holy Ghost”  Audre Lorde’s elegy “Father Son and Holy Ghost” revisits memories of a respected father, who has died and who served as a model for consistent behavior.  The speaker’s quiet affection becomes evident as she relives special features of her father and her reactions to them.
• Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “The Queen’s Last Ride”  As the subtitle to the elegy reveals, the poet composed her poem “The Queen’s Last Ride” on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral on February 2, 1901. The poem retains it special status and a tribute to the queen, whose reign influenced an era.
• Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”  Thomas Gray’s elegy describes a beautiful scene in the country landscape, as the speaker muses upon the life and death of rustic, simple folk in the pastoral setting.
• Robert Frost’s “To E. T.”  The speaker in Robert Frost elegy “To E. T.” expresses his musings about his friendship with a fellow poet, who died serving as a soldier in World War I.
• Rita Dove’s “Rosa”  Former U. S. poet laureate, Rita Dove, offers a simple yet powerful elegiac tribute to one of America’s heroes, Rosa Parks, who through her act of defiance by simply continuing to occupy a bus seat, became known as the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”
• Robert Graves’ “Not Dead”  The speaker in Robert Graves’ elegy “Not Dead” remembers his son who died in war; his tribute resurrects the young man as a spiritual reality.
• William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by Joy”   In “Surprised by Joy—impatient as the Wind,” the speaker’s mystic musing reveals his soul yearning; Wordsworth has revealed that this elegy was urged by his deceased daughter.

Songs with Commentaries

1. Gary Clarks’s “Mary’s Prayer”: A Yogic Interpretation 
2. .38 Special’s “Second Chance”

Novels

1. D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love